"Well, yes," he answered, "I am in bad humor, like a man who for ten years past has been beating the drum in front of your d--d financial shops, and who does not pay expenses. Yes, for ten years I have shouted myself hoarse for your benefit: 'Walk in, ladies and gentlemen, and, for every twenty-cent-piece you deposit with us, we will return you a five-franc-piece. Walk in, follow the crowd, step up to the office: this is the time.' They go in. You receive mountains of twenty-cent-pieces: you never return anything, neither a five-franc-piece, nor even a centime. The trick is done, the public is sold. You drive your own carriage; you suspend diamonds to your mistress' ears; and I, the organizer of success, whose puffs open the tightest closed pockets, and start up the old louis from the bottom of the old woolen stocking, - I am driven to have my boots half-soled. You stint me my existence; you kick as soon as I ask you to pay for the big drums bursted in your beha1f"
He spoke so loud, that three or four idlers had stopped. Without being very shrewd, Maxence understood readily that he had happened in the midst of an acrimonious discussion. Closely pressed, and desirous of gaining time, M. Costeclar had called him in the hopes of effecting a diversion.
Bowing, therefore, politely, "Excuse me, gentlemen," he-said: "I fear I have interrupted you."
But M. Costeclar detained him.
"Don't go," he declared; "you must come down and take a glass of Madeira with us, down at the Cascade."
And, turning to the editor of "The Pilot":
"Come, now, shut up," he said: "you shall have what you want."
"Really?"
"Upon my word."
"I'd rather have two or three lines in black and white."
"I'll give them to you to-night."
"All right, then! Forward the big guns! Look out for next Sunday's number!"
Peace being made, the gentlemen continued their walk in the most friendly manner, M. Costeclar pointing out to Maxence all the celebrities who were passing by them in their carriages.
He had just designated to his attention Mme. and Mlle. de Thaller, accompanied by two gigantic footmen, when, suddenly interrupting himself, and rising on tiptoe, "Sacre bleu!" he exclaimed: "what a handsome woman!"
Without too much affectation, Maxence fell back a step or two. He felt himself blushing to his very ears, and trembled lest his sudden emotion were noticed, and he were questioned; for it was Mlle.
Lucienne who thus excited M. Costeclar's noisy enthusiasm. Once already she had been around the lake; and she was continuing her circular drive.
"Positively," approved the editor of "The Financial Pilot," "she is somewhat better than the rest of those ladies we have just seen going by."
M. Costeclar was on the point of pulling out what little hair he had left.
"And I don't know her!" he went on. "A lovely woman rides in the Bois, and I don't know who she is! That is ridiculous and prodigious! Who can post us?"
A little ways off stood a group of gentlemen, who had also just left their carriages, and were looking on this interminable procession of equipages and this amazing display of toilets.
"They are friends of mine," said M. Costeclar: "let us join them."
They did so; and, after the usual greetings, "Who is that?" inquired M. Costeclar, - "that dark person, whose carriage follows Mme. de Thaller's?"
An old young man, with scanty hair, dyed beard, and a most impudent smile, answered him, "That's just what we are trying to find out. None of us have ever seen her."